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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26989123">Red rose</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaybirdTheAuthor/pseuds/JaybirdTheAuthor'>JaybirdTheAuthor</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft - Fandom, Minecraft youtube</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>I am projecting on Karl, M/M, also an oblivious little shit, and I wanted to write gay, because I’m a guy who loves guys, but I’m primary an action horror writer, fucking hard, i think you can see that with me, i’m gay, romance is hard, so this is one of my first real attempts at it</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 23:15:39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,023</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26989123</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaybirdTheAuthor/pseuds/JaybirdTheAuthor</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>He never liked flowers until they met and now he’s giving him them at his doorstep, four years after their first meeting.<br/>——————————————————</p><p>If either person being shipped states themselves against shipping, I am glad to delete this work.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sapnap/Karl Jacobs</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>364</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Red rose</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Baby’s breath is meant to mean sincerity here since apparently my original idea flower also means fucking death and I would’ve rather not done that.</p><p>Baby’s breath-Sincerity<br/>Blue salva-thinking of you<br/>Red rose-I love you.</p><p>In basics I meant to say ‘I’m sincerely in love with you and think about you’ but it’s a bit broken since I’m not fluent in the language of flowers. Extend your believe please, also for the fact Texas has all of those.</p><p>Thank you!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He was never a huge fan of flowers before that summer four years ago—call a 14 year old him boring, call him whatever, but they just never really interested him. He couldn’t name a single flower other than rose and daisy for a long time, maybe others if he had nothing else to think about on a particular day. He remembers the day of his middle school graduation, how they all had to stand on stage to get a red rose each and how he with no hesitancy at all had given his sister said rose after walking off stage, holding it carelessly and tossing it, after it wounded him with its thorns, in his sisters lap (his sister had killed the flower within a day—their grandmothers green thumb hadn’t seemed to touch her at all, maybe her brother wounding the flower before had given it incentive to die quicker.)</p><p>The summer after middle school, he and his parents drove down to Texas to go to his grandparents' new house, the home they planned to die in. It had been a long drive, a drive down a lane of unmade memories into a backyard full of seeds for planting that summer, flowers and herbs and everything in between.</p><p>At first, being a fourteen year old boy, the idea of planting seeds with his grandmother had seemed annoying, especially when his sister got to go to Hawaii with her friends family. There is a big difference between standing around in a garden in Texas. So while your elderly grandmother sits in a chair,you’re planting seeds wherever she asks while she sits still and watches, your sister is laying down in the sun of Hawaii playing in the water with girls, he found that horribly unfair at first. The unfair nature of their summers had pissed him off so bad he felt like throwing a rocus about the treatment—a fourteen year old boy doesn’t always have the emotional control not to scream hurtful things, to realise that life isn’t always fair.</p><p>That summer, four years ago now, was when he met Sapnap. It had been the fourth of June (him having arrived at his grandparents late first to early second day of June—around midnight), the boy had come to their backyard to ask if he could help with the slow plantation project. It hadn’t been until later that Karl learned his friend's dad had ordered him to help, the boy having protested in favour of playing Minecraft at first until he had just decided to go with the flow of things.</p><p>It had been awkward for a few days, they’d plant during the evening so the sun wouldn’t burn the pale boys alive and already had a lot of social interaction for the day, until naturally it had become easier and easier to talk about everything from video games to football to if pineapple belongs on pizza or if Harry Potter is overrated, to favourite animes to if the McDonalds PlaySpace nearby should allow children above eight years old to even flowers.</p><p>What Karl had learned through these flower conversations was that there is so much more to flowers than just what he had thought, he learned flower language and how Sapnap was absolutely horrible at it so they had to google the meaning of every single flower, names of dozens of flowers he has never really paid any attention to, all because Sapnap’s voice was so nice to listen to for him.</p><p>Parting ways on September first, the boys had shared steams and Instagrams, promising to be back with each other next summer and the one afterwards at least twice a week in case things got busy.</p><p>Karl realised he was bi around his sixteenth birthday, not for any particularly taking reason other than being in Texas on July 19th and having Sapnap stay over for his birthday, sleeping on an air mattress together and tickling each other and talking about taking other the world together (definitely figuratively, they did not plan to overthrow the government, and they definitely wouldn’t do it by sleeping with the president and holding it over his head then making themselves ministers before getting on everyone’s good side to win next legal election—most definitely not, who would think that?)</p><p>The exact words he had said to the brown eyed boy after they stayed up all night and the sunrise from the window, at least it’s light, made its way onto the air mattress may or may not have been ‘you’re pretty’ covered up with a quick ‘cool’. But yeah, that had been the moment he had realised, that exact moment. Should he have made the connection sooner? Maybe, maybe not, in many ways it’s an early time to tell you’re not fucking straight and in many others it’s a late one. He prefers to argue it’s his pace and nobody else can tell him if he is fast or slow when his pace is his pace. </p><p>It hadn’t faded, had been another thing. He assumed it would fade, he assumed he would maybe go back to assuming straightness with the bare minimum interest in girls but even less in guys—he had expected to go back to feeling almost nothing for anyone but the more he looked back the more he realised it had been a Texan boy who thought he sucked at Minecraft he had interest in all the time since he had met the other, the way he fell asleep on call and the way they were some of the only people to hear each other cry. It made sense, the more he thought about it, it almost sounded like a romance novel one of their sisters would read (Sapnap having two younger, him having one older), to meet planting flowers and end up falling in love over the summers spent looking after those very same flowers. The amount of sense in the fact it had been the other this whole time, it shocks him how he somehow didn’t realise it sooner. How somehow he had thought that moment had been something more general than specific, how the orange sunrise had made him feel cast over the other wasn’t just an attraction to a handsome dude but the fact he was looking at his friend, one he truly cared for, someone he had fallen in love with.</p><p>Baby’s breath isn’t as rare of a flower as he had thought, googling through meanings with hopefulness while walking in a flower shop. Okay, perhaps this is him being highly difficult about saying that he’s in love with his friend, flower meanings are hard and the other boy doesn’t even know them. He’s an 18 year old guy, in a flower shop, looking for baby’s breath or Chrysanthemums (red or white at least) with his fingers hovering over a red rose display with intrigue, feeling the thorns with affection. He remembers middle school graduation and that rose for just a moment, a soft smile on his lips at the memory and how his opinion on flowers changed throughout his years.</p><p>“What would you like?”</p><p>He looks around for just a moment longer, no Chrysanthemum, he can make due with the baby’s breath and roses. Roses are fantastic as well after all, those just would’ve been ideal.</p><p>“Just roses probably, unless you do have Chrysanthemums stocked again somewhere?”</p><p>He doubts, he highly doubts, but asking is never too big of an ordeal. If they have some, he’s in luck. If they don’t, he doesn’t exactly need them.</p><p>“I’m afraid not.”<br/>
“That’s alright, baby’s breath?”<br/>
“That we do have. Anything else?”<br/>
“Blue salvia and red roses, I did see those earlier”<br/>
“Indeed you did, coming right up.”</p><p>He stands there, anxiously, fidgeting with his wallet while waiting it out at the desk. The whole thing is fairly simple, mostly red roses with an outer ring of baby’s breath and a middle with two blue salvias. Easy, fantastic, great.</p><p>After his social interaction limit of the day has been met, his feet walk him to his car almost on autopilot as he puts the flowers down and puts his car in drive.</p><p>He doesn’t exactly know how he completely blanked until he’s in front of Sapnap’s house, nor how his nerves don’t kill him as he takes his flowers and holds them in his hand before hopping up to the door of his ‘friend’, ringing the doorbell while listening to the fighting from inside (not a bad kind, the kind three teenagers under one roof cause—the ‘ill get it’ ‘no me’ fighting) before Sapnap opens the door and he freezes up.</p><p>Before this very moment, he realises, in all of two years he has found some attraction in Sapnap, he hasn’t actually considered the possibility his friend doesn’t feel the same until the moment his eyes are on the other boy with the context that he is about to confess—it felt so obviously mutual until now, the way they spent every single way running home from school to get to each other as soon as possible, the way they begged to stay home/go to their grandparents every summer just to meet up nearly every day, the way Sapnap has never said he’d ever found interest in a girl (or a guy for that matter) in a way nearly as much as Karl, he just felt like it was obvious until this very moment. He felt the fact they plan to go to an out of state college just so they can be with each other was such a clear romantic gesture. But now, looking at the situation, he feels it more complicated and he feels anxiety pumping blood into his heart so much faster than he thought it ever could. Especially it pumping with the shock apparent on the Texans face, making him almost shake.</p><p>“You’re early,” Sapnap notes, a smile on his lips at the sight of him after his shock has worn off, “I was expecting you tomorrow.”</p><p>“I ran home after graduation, jumped in the car and came. I packed yesterday too, just so I could come as fast as possible,” Karl explains, holding the flowers behind his back before taking a deep breath and handing them to the shorter boy, deciding to just go for it, “Got these for you.”</p><p>He feels his chest pounding with the blush on the others cheeks as he grabs the flowers, looking at them with the cutest little smile in his eyes. It’s unconscious, as if Sapnap knew that he meant to confess.</p><p>“They red for a reason?” is the quiet question leaving the former football player, making it Karl’s turn to blush with a soft, slight, nod making it known he means exactly what red roses usually mean.</p><p>They stand there for a second, both a bit dumbfounded that they actually got to be in this moment with tension and flower smells floating in the air, before Sapnap takes one rose out from the small dozen and gives it back to Karl, as if a silent acceptance of his feelings. It’s as silent as his confession had been but as clear as well.</p><p>His hands run over the rose, pressing sweetly against a few petals before running his finger down the stem with the thorns not hurting with how light his press is. It’s like he’s afraid of wounding the tiny flower. He treats it like a child, careful not to press it too hard or to make it feel unwelcome in his hand, all the while the man he got flowers for in the first place watches him with a love stuck smile, still perfectly still holding the flowers.</p><p>The red rose doesn’t even get abandoned when the Texan leans in to kiss him, instead it gets held gently behind the boy’s neck as their lips collide in this moment at the door of the Texan boys house with the sunset shining from behind Karl, coating their moment in a golden glow</p><p>Needless to say, the red rose lasts over a week.</p>
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